Bryan Singer is a talented director, no question. That admission might sound out of place coming from a guy who poked fun at Singer’s initials and said that Superman Returns gets worse every time I see it. But it’s true. I sometimes jest, but I have great respect for filmmakers because they open themselves to be embarrassingly mocked, praised, or ignored every time they produce something new.
Singer did an incredible service to comic-book movies by paving the way for their success with 2000’s X-Men. After 1997’s Batman & Robin killed comic-book movies’ momentum for a few years, X-Men showed that it was possible to have a big team-up film full of superheroes and make it work. It’s a modest movie, especially by the standards of The Avengers and the Dark Knight trilogy, but it’s still well-acted and carefully crafted.
After X2: X-Men United, Singer hung up his claws to try his hand at another famous superhero series with the aforementioned Superman Returns. Since then, he’s fallen into relative obscurity, directing a few TV movies, as well as the somewhat popular Valkyrie and the critically panned Jack the Giant Slayer. His next big movie is 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past.
My question is: Was it a good idea for Singer to return to X-Men after so many years?
Singer’s presence adds a welcome bit of nostalgia and it seems to bode well for the project because his first two films of the series are undoubtedly the best, along with X-Men: First Class, which he helped write and produce.
Sentinels and an all-out war between humans and mutants are what we’ve been waiting for, and it looks like we’re finally going to get them in the next film. But is Bryan Singer the right man to bring such an epic story to the big screen? He’s unproven in that area. Continue reading
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